


Dive In at the Deep End

by thetidesisrising



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Suffering, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 10:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12816000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetidesisrising/pseuds/thetidesisrising
Summary: "She felt the worst at night. In the dead stillness of the night with that vacant space beside her she emptied herself of all thoughts until she encompassed a shape. Dissolving the shape, she morphed herself into a void, viewing the void from above, discerning the empty chasm within. Liz. What are you Liz? Why are you Liz?"





	Dive In at the Deep End

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is! My much anticipated next blacklist fic! I was so inspired after watching 5x08, which was such a beautiful episode, so I decided to try and tackle Liz's grief. Though this definitely has keenler undertones, this story is about Liz and her grief, and because of that it's very dark. She may seem a little OOC because of that, but I wanted this to be a portrait of her grief and her recovery. Please review!! Enjoy!!

_I dive in at the deep end_

_She’s become my best friend_

_I wanna love you_

_But I don’t know if I can_

_I know something is broken_

_And I’m trying to fix it_

_Trying to repair it_

_Anyway I can_ – X&Y, Coldplay

Ressler visited her the day after she wakes.

He froze in the doorway, the frame’s shadow shading his ashen face. She was struck by the liminality, his body half in the room, half out, just as she had been half in life, half out. His hair looked like he had run his hand through it a billion times in the last ten months, and his beautiful blue eyes were sullen and bloodshot. He looked ghastly unhinged; if she could feel anything but the calamitous, crawling, colossal depression she would have been concerned; if she could speak she would have ushered him in with soothing words, assuaging the furrow of his brow. Instead she stared, her eyes vacant yet entreating.

“Liz.”

He said her name like a dead man breathing.

She blinked, salty, hot tears obscuring her vision. She watched as he opened his mouth, his words presently suspended. She shifted, brow furrowing as she attempted to hear him. His eyes poured into her like she was a glass of his beloved bourbon; he drank her up, savoring each flicker of her eyelids.

“Agent Keen!”

She jolted at the sound of her last name, glaring at the source of the noise. Upon seeing Aram, she softened, her eyes filling with a dull melancholy. She tried to listen while he chattered on, his hand clutching hers. After a minute of his solicitations she grew tired, wondering why Ressler had not yet approached her bed.

When she looked up he was gone.

-

Samar came three days after they removed Liz’s venerator, her lips pressed together in a kind smile. Stopping a foot before the bed, Samar held up two chocolate milkshakes.

“Thirsty?”

Liz nodded vigorously, her eyes vacant as Samar handed her the Styrofoam cup. She paused as the straw reached her lips, hesitating.

“Would you like some help sitting up?”

Liz sighed in relief.

“Yes, please.”

Her voice was dreadfully hoarse, her vocal chords creaked and her throat was aflame. Reddington encouraged her to speak as much as possible to improve her condition, but Liz felt undeserving; her silence was her denial. She listened when Tom pleaded with her not to speak, a decision which ultimately ended in his death. If Samar noticed the slight quiver of her chin as she eased her into a sitting position, she made no comment, stepping back and sipping her drink in companionable silence.

“We’re glad to have you back, Liz,” Samar said after a while, her face earnest.

Liz remained silent, her eyes boring into the plastered wall, discerning each inscrutable crack. She sealed herself until she was as cracked as the wall, hollowly complete.

Samar cleared her throat.

“Reddington’s kept up with the task force, he’s feeding the cases through Ressler.”

She elicited a noncommittal hum.

“How is he?” she croaked.

Samar paused, her features uncomfortably shifting as she swallowed her words as they reached her tongue, searching for the right syllables.

“He’s relieved.”

Samar huffed, settling on opening up a little bit more.

“The last ten months have been hard, Liz. Especially on him.”

Liz quirked an eyebrow, and the conversation advanced to more trivial topics. Samar took her leave once the sun waned, the day turning to temporal twilight. Before she exited the room she stopped, glancing over her shoulder at the broken brunette in the bed.

“Liz, please be kind to him. You have no idea how much he’s suffered.”

-

“Do you want to see Agnes?”

In the week since the removal of her ventilator, Liz hardly spoke, favoring nonverbal responses. Reddington visited her every morning, entertaining her ruminations with various poems. On that particular morning he read “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and though she had always liked the poem, she remained uncoherent. She had been intensely despondent as of late, sinking further and further in on herself like an uprooted tree collapsing in quicksand.

“You have not seen your daughter in eleven months.”

She remained still.

Reddington closed his book, shifting towards her.

“Lizzy, you cannot hide within yourself forever.”

He lifted a hand to her forehead, brushing her hair back from her face with his fingers. “Tom would not want that,” he added softly.

Something seemed to awaken within her at the sound of Tom, her eyes rapidly brightening in color before dimming completely. She remained vacant.

Reddington sighed, reaching in his coat pocket for his phone.

“Dembe, bring them in.”

Four minutes later Ressler emerged in the doorway with Agnes in his arms. Though his hair was gelled back in the style she was used to, gaunt shadows remained under his eyes. She was almost surprised to see him in a flannel and jeans. She began to openly cry at the sight of Agnes, who had grown more in the last eleven months than she could have ever imagined. She suddenly grew furious; she had been robbed of a whole year of her daughter’s life. Ressler leaned over her to deposit Agnes into her arms, lightly touching Liz’s face as though he was truly unsure of her presence. His familiar, musky cologne soothed her; she felt incandescently safe.

She bowed her head, pressing little kisses along the crown of her daughter’s head, tears falling in her daughter’s hair.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

In her joyous reunion she did not notice Ressler slip out of the room to get coffee until later, Agnes lulled to sleep by her mother’s distressing cries. Gently stroking Agnes’s hair, Liz looked towards Reddington, who continued to hold her hand.

“Who took care of her while I was … gone.”

Reddington straightened as though he expected this conversation to occur, raising his shoulders to meet her question.

“I tried to at first,” he began, noting the faint appreciation in her eyes.

She was so banal, so flat; her eyes were the only part of her that conveyed emotion, and until then, that emotion consisted of various shades of grief. This was the first time she had shown appreciation, faint as it was.

“But I had to continue building my empire,” he continued, crossing his legs. “Constant traveling and gunfire is no playground for a toddler, I’m afraid. But then Donald offered to take her and I just could not refuse. Even Donald is a better alternative than a nameless nanny.”

Two new emotions breached Liz’s eyes: shock, swiftly followed profound confusion. She tilted her head, glancing at Reddington in bewilderment.

“Why would Ressler take on that burden for me?”

“It was the least I could do, Liz,” the man in question said from the doorway, scalding coffee in hand.

He continued to hover in the frame, suspended, unable to move in or out.

“Well I thank you,” she replied quietly, her eyes softening in a more pronounced gratitude.

Agnes began to stir, shifting in her mother’s arms as she turned towards the door

“D-D –” Agnes began, her arms reaching for Ressler.

“I think it’s time for our dear Agnes to return to Donald for a nap; she has had an awfully long day,” Reddington intervened, scooping Agnes from Liz’s arms in one swift motion and placing her in Ressler’s.

Agnes’s swift removal spurred Liz into a panic, her hands shaking uncontrollably.

“Are you going to come again?” She blurted anxiously.

Surprised at her forward display of emotion, Reddington looked at Ressler as he took one step into the room.

“Whenever you’d like,” Ressler responded.

Liz fixated on him with eyes as big as her daughter’s.

“Promise?”

Her voice was so small, like a candle that burned all night, its flame slowly dwindling, easily susceptible to any slight whisper of the wind.

His looked into her eyes, adjusting his hold on Agnes who happily fiddled with the collar of his shirt.

“I promise.”

-

She was released from the hospital at twilight on a Wednesday three months after she first woke. Three months of visits from Agnes, sometimes accompanied by Ressler, but mostly without him. She was delighted at Agnes’s progress; recently, she began calling her “mommy.” She made sure to tell Agnes stories of her father; she refused for her daughter to grow up without a father. The hospital consented to her release only if Agnes remained with Ressler for another month while she got acclimated to her new apartment.

Reddington bought her a new apartment in a quaint area of Georgetown. Though she was angry at him for spending money on her, she was massively relieved. She dreaded returning back to her previous apartment.

Though she improved physically, mentally she remained in a fog, smog seeping through the cracks in the plaster she made, filling her with toxins. She felt the worst at night. In the dead stillness of the night with that vacant space beside her she emptied herself of all thoughts until she encompassed a shape. Dissolving the shape, she morphed herself into a void, viewing the void from above, discerning the empty chasm within. Liz. What are you Liz? Why are you Liz? If she could think maybe she would know, but in becoming a void she abandoned all semblance of humanity, emotion and thought fading into a profound nothingness. Suddenly, a vague shape entered the void, morphing into a distinct form. She pictured herself as a doorway, caught dead in the frame, rooted to the spot. Half in, half out.

A sharp ring roused her into her body.

She rolled over to source the ring and was surprised when she found the culprit to be her work phone. She glanced at it vacantly, allowing it to ring two more times before she answered.

“Keen.”

The man on the line inhaled, evening his quavering breath. She could tell it was man by the depth of his emotion; no woman could be that furiously afraid; though women could also be drawn to violence and were equally malicious when afraid, there was a certain masculinity about the breadth of his emotion; no woman could be as unhinged as the man on the line was, even in the face of certain death.

“Keen. Oh thank God,” Ressler said, his breath heaving.

She furrowed her brow, undoubtedly confused.

“Ressler?”

She could feel him freeze; the man was probably ridged in his bed, drenched in sweat. His night terrors used to be worse than hers, yet no one could trump hers now.

“Forget it. I shouldn’t have called.”

Her confusion delayed her response, and afraid that he would hang up, she spoke rapidly.

“Don’t apologize, I wasn’t sleeping anyway. What’s wrong?”

She could hear his hesitation; he was so predictable, so uptight and disinterested in help.

“It’s nothing, I just uhh, I had a bad dream,” he replied.

She could see him running his hand through his hair. She huffed.

“Obviously it’s something Ress if you called me at two twenty.”

He chuckled, and it reminded her of that glorious year before she went on the run, when she thought her life would end differently than where she was now.

“I dreamed that you died.”

She froze.

“Oh.”

She contemplated what to say. Ressler was difficult to ascertain, each time she thought she exposed him there was another layer underneath. She felt that she was running out of layers to peel back, peeling and peeling until nothing but mere atoms remained.

“Do you have a case?” she asked.

He cleared his throat.

“Yeah, we’re tackling a pretty hefty one.”

“Well good luck. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” She paused, her voice near confessional. “I’ve missed you.”

She heard his breath hitch, and for the first time in over a year the smallest of smiles toyed at her lips.

“I’ve missed you too, Liz.”

With those words she felt the butterflies in her stomach begin to flutter, filling her with a warm glow.

“Have a good night Ress. Get some sleep.”

“You too, Liz.”

She rested her head on the pillow, staring off into the darkness while she succumbed to sleep.

-

Her month of loneliness slowly trickled by. While some of it was borderline tolerable, consisting of a plethora of visits from the task force, most notably being Aram, the enormity in her chest remained. Most nights were filled with gruesome visions of Tom: Tom being stabbed, Tom choking to death on his own blood; she kept wondering why she didn’t die. She was motionless, robotic; she only felt alive when she was with Agnes.

Agnes. Her dearest, darling, Agnes.

She would have her all to herself in a week. Ressler kept his promise, often dropping Agnes off for the day while he went to work, but she felt more like a nanny than a mother, and she so desperately longed to tell Agnes about Tom. She refrained from speaking of Tom for the last few months, choosing instead to re-learn her little girl, making up for losing ten months of sacred time. She would never forgive herself for those ten months.

On that particular night Ressler was running late from work, held over by a tantalizing interrogation. Liz decided to make them spaghetti, figuring that it was the least she could do for Ressler’s parenting efforts during her coma. Agnes stood by the fridge while she cooked, babbling on about a new toy Reddington gave her.

“Where’s daddy?”

Liz froze, nearly dropping the bottle of red sauce in her hand.

“What?” she sputtered after a moment, attempting to regain her composure.

Agnes shrugged.

“Daddy. He’s usually-”

A brisk knock on the door interrupted her.

“It’s open!” Liz shouted, still perturbed about her daughter’s question.

Ressler walked in, depositing his messenger bag on the island and placing his coat on the hook.

“Daddy!” Agnes squealed, throwing her arms around his knees.

He smiled, bending over to stroke her hair.

“How was your day with mommy?”

Agnes’s face lit up, excitedly chattering about her time spent at the park and the grocery store. Ressler ushered her to the table, taking his place next to Liz as he helped her serve.   

Liz was numb. She felt so intrinsically cold, devoid of all feeling besides the profoundness of her grief. She remained silent throughout dinner, her face made of stone. Even afterwards, when she helped Agnes with her coat, her little girl smiling widely as she hugged her legs, she remained empty.

“I love you mommy.”

Her breath hitched. She felt so cold.

“I love you too baby.”

-

Ressler came over without Agnes the next day.

By then, her numbness thawed, leaving her boiling with fury.

“I’m so sorry about yesterday, Liz,” he began, settling on her sofa. “I kept reminding her that I’m not her father but she was persistent, after the first five months I gave it up.”

Her mind was reeling, her last conversation with Tom torturing her as she replayed it over and over again in her head.

“What do you mean you gave up?”

Ressler was taken aback by her quiet tone, wondering how to handle it.

“She just wouldn’t listen I-”

She snorted.

“I can’t believe you. My daughter loses her father and then you just happen to slide into the role. Don’t you understand that she needs to know about him? You can’t just replace him like he never even existed!”

He swallowed thickly, trying to maintain a firm grip on his demeanor.

“Of course I understand that Liz. I would never try to replace him. I can’t believe you would think that I wanted this to happen; I never wanted any of this to happen.”

He looked far away, his voice quietening as he finished speaking.

            She laughed mechanically.

            “Of course you never wanted this to happen!” she spat sarcastically, moving closer to him. “You always hated Tom, and hell if you ever cared about me.”

            He appeared struck, standing to meet her gaze, his eyes filled with intense sorrow.

“How could you even say that!? Damnit Liz, you have no idea how I feel!”

“Oh please! You hunted me for months! It’s obvious that you’ve wanted me dead. The only thing protecting me right now is Reddington and his goddamn blacklist.”  

“I get that you’re upset, Liz. You’re saying things that you don’t mean. The Liz I know would never say that,” he clenched his jaw, his voice strained as he pleased with her.

He paused.

“You almost died, Liz. Don’t you know how terrifying that was?”

His words jarred her. She desperately scanned her brain for any semblance of a comeback when she stumbled upon it: a near clandestine conversation shared four years previously in their office, carelessly stashed away in a seemingly archaic crevice of her brain with a bottle of homemade wine.

She was far away, her eyes glassy.

_“The prospect of living without me must have been terrifying.”_

_“It was.”_

Tears flooded her eyes, her hand shaking as it covered her mouth.

“ _Oh,_ _Ress_ ,” she moaned, tears trailing down her cheeks.

He averted her gaze, his chest folding in on itself to protect him from her.

“Did you not think it was the same for me too?”

Her knees began to wobble; she felt as though the floor would swallow her whole, flattening her into one of its wooden boards, cursed to feel his boots crush her over and over again for her ignorance.

“Ress I-”

He laughed bitterly, shaking his head to hide his red-rimmed eyes.

“You know what, I just – I’ll see you around, Liz.”

He turned on his heel, exiting the kitchen and slamming the door to her apartment, leaving her to collapse against the dishwasher, scrubbing her insides with sharp guilt as she began to sob.

Time appeared finesse: suddenly twilight was upon her, cascading her in its fading glow. She caught the gleam of a kitchen knife in the glow, languidly picking herself up to grasp it, twirling its handle between her fingers.

There was a hollowness inside her chest and if she concentrated long enough she could crawl down inside it, tucking her knees to her chest till she’s rocked tight as a sea shell, oblivious to the surrounding emptiness. If she focused long enough she could drain the world of color, noise, and smell, watching it all flush down a black and white drain at the center of the hollow shell. She was a delicate, porcelain pearl, white skin glowing and fading as she taunted death. How easy it would be to end it all. She reached for her phone, absently dialing a number as she stared at the knife in her hand.

He picked up on the second to last ring.

“Ressler.”

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to die?”

She heard his sharp intake of breath, but she was far away.

“Liz,” he began, his voice urgent.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she confessed, staring at her hands.

“Liz, what’s going on?”

She seemed impenetrable to his voice, painstakingly hollow.

“It must have been so painful to go by knives; don’t you think? He was so undeserving of that fate, but me…” she trailed off, trying to picture him in her mind.

She vaguely heard the sound of screeching tires and his panicked voice, begging her to stay on the line.

“I loved him but I wasn’t worthy. He was so bad for me but I loved him. I hope he can still love me.”

The minutes seemed to tick by, tranquility easing her battered soul. She stared out the window at the slight snow shower, strangely calm as she watched the snowflakes dance in the twilight.

“I could have loved you too, Ress,” she whispered.

“Goodbye.”

The door to her apartment burst open, and he barreled at her, knocking the knife from her arms while he held her to his chest. She sobbed against him, grasping the collar of his shirt between her fingers as he clutched her to him, one hand in her hair, the other rubbing circles on her back. His lips caressed her right ear, whispering into it, but she couldn’t hear him, her body in shock of her mind’s traitorous thoughts. When she finally stopped heaving, her body deprived of tears, she grabbed him harder, her arms tightening around his neck.

“Never do that to me again,” he croaked, his voice hoarse from crying.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, her voice rising in distress.

He shushed her, running his hands through her hair to soothe her.

“I can’t do this alone, Ress,” she confessed, her voice breaking on his name.

He pulled back, titling her chin up to meet her eyes.

“You’ll never be alone again, Liz.”

She stared into his eyes, their blueness swallowing her in their enormity.

“You promise?”

His voice was definitive.

“I promise.”


End file.
